“You – you know, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn’t want to do it,” the 48-year-old anchor said on the air yesterday.

Today, Don offered an apology to viewers on CNN. “As I am a victim myself I would never want to suggest that any victim could have prevented a rape. If my question to her struck anyone as insensitive, I am sorry as that is certainly and was not my intention.”

In the past, Don admitted to being sexually abused by a friend of his mother’s when he was young.

When it becomes quite clear that this person in a position of power or authority (compared to you, a relative suppliant), wants to have his sexual way with you, a constellation of possibilities immediately runs through your panicked mind – I won’t get the job or account, I will lose my job or this account, he’ll start spreading horrible lies about me, I’ll never work anywhere again where his influence reaches, etc, etc., including even the possibility of death if he lost his temper. Unless you start feeling that this guy is really a serial killer and I’m not getting out of here alive so I might as well put up a last-breath fight, the prospect of job loss and social ostracism becomes less and less acceptable if it means your life will not only be spared but that you get that job, close that sale, get the account, promotion, whatever, and that the kind of sexual activity he wants pronto doesn’t involve the kind of physical violence that results in cuts, bleeding, contusions and other traumas. When “cooperating” under these conditions are “rewarded’ with “good girl,” “shhhh,” and “It’ll be over soon” and not followed by a fist to your face or your stomach or by anything else that renders you unconscious, all your instincts for self-preservation shift gears to overdrive, and just obey him and not trigger his anger. You’re not even thinking STD or pregnancy – just to stay conscious and alive for how long as it takes for this to be over. Today, in the age of DNA, the only reason for you to get up as soon as it’s over and bolt out of there and head straight to a clinic for a rape kit is if you’re under 18. Then you’ll have a fighting chance in the court. Otherwise you should have brought a secret video cam with you during the interview, a la ‘Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.’

JesChastain

You sound ugly, fat, and poor.

FormerLamark

In such serious cases, consideration should be given to anyone first who stands in front of the public and only then to speak.